[plug] Learning PHP advice

[Patrick Coleman]

On 21/02/06, caston at arach.net.au <caston at arach.net.au> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I applied for a job administering 500+ machines late last week that was asking
> for a graduate and said that PHP experience would be desirable.
>
> I told them I had been self-employed for the last four years and that I did
> not know PHP but would learn it.
>
> I did a bit of pascal, c/c++ vbscript, vb6.0 in highschool and TAFE and of
> course have always dabbled around in html. Would have been nice if they had of
> thought web based programming back in the late '90s and school though ;)
>
> What resources would you recommend for learning PHP?
> Should I start at 4,5 or 6?
>
> I have quite a few commercial ideas for websites that I am eager to implement
> as part of the learning curve.
>
> regards,
>
> Chris Caston

I feel that the PHP reference manual is very good, and it is all I
used to learn the language. Read through the short tutorial bit, skim
the language and feature reference, read the security bit (especially
if you haven't done web programming before!) and then just browse the
function definitions as you use them in a project. That works for me,
though YMMV as always.

PHP4 and PHP5 are very similar - the main difference is that PHP5 has
a much better class syntax. Most webhosts that I know of still run
PHP4 (4.3 seems to be the norm) but if you have control over what gets
installed and you prefer OO over functional programming then use PHP5.
Classes are possible in PHP4 but you dont get features like
destructors, prototyping and a few other things.

PHP5 is the latest version afaik, though feel free to correct me :)

-Patrick
--
http://www.labyrinthdata.net.au